Poems XI–XIV: Mourning His Brother

1041–1042

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In the second set of poems written in the year after the death of his older brother Isaac, Samuel ha-Nagid narrated the period that began with the end of the month of mourning (sheloshim), during which time he continued to suffer and mourn intensely. Yet as time passed, ha-Nagid was further distressed by the fact that his sadness began to abate, and he labeled himself “faithless” and a “traitor” for daring to return to his routine. After pondering his own demise during a visit to his brother’s grave, ha-Nagid composed the longest poem in this series, bitterly describing his sleepless nights and his pain at hearing his brother’s name.

Illustration of a bearded, crying man in a robe and turban, his head surrounded by a gold halo, crouching beside a shrouded figure, also haloed, lying on a wooden bed.

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XI

And when a month had passed since his brother’s death, he thought:

What,

My brother scarcely dead a month,

And I already long for bathhouses, amusements, dalliance?

Can I so faithless be, a traitor to my cause?

Let me mourn on, then: days desolate, hands struck in grief, beard unbarbered, meals chewed in solitude, all consolation spurned,

Bereft.

He lies untongued. What voice to weep with except mine does he have left?

XII

After which he went to visit his brother’s grave. He traveled until he had nearly reached the cemetery, when he stopped and thought:

Suppose the ocean lay between us,

Don’t you think I still would leave

Everything to come and see you

And run the last steps to your grave,

Since not to do so would be treason

To our bond of brother-love?

O my brother!

Soon I will sit by your grave,

And the hurt in my heart will be like the hurt when you died.

For if I say hello to you,

You will not answer me;

Nor will you come to greet me

When I come to your country;

Nor will you laugh, nor will I laugh

At any pleasantry;

Nor will you see my face again,

Nor will I ever see

Yours either,

Now that you have made

The earth your hostelry.

Adieu and fare you well,

My father’s eldest and my mother’s son,

And may God’s spirit rest upon your soul.

I shall return to my own soil, and you shall rest in yours,

And I shall sleep and wake anon, and you shall wake no more,

And may the flame of parting burn till I too cross Death’s door!

XIII

After which he thought:

You,

Should you see him whom I long to see,

Though sent by me forever on his way,

Tell him but this:

I swear by the living God

That the fire for him in my heart

Will not die till I lie by his side!

XIV

And later that year, when three more of his parents’ family had died, he wrote this elegy, the longest of his poems for his brother:

Come soon, oh, soon, day I am called from here

And laid in earth where sorrows are unseen—

And you, day I was born on, be forgot!

Is there a pain that can compare with mine?

What blow is like it?

Who is the person I can share it with?

Would he shudder for me if I did?

And if I vent on him my bitterness,

Could he keep from being dumbfounded?

O brother born for me to mourn,

Would I not give

This one and only life

For you to live?

I grieve for you who battened on my love

And loved me as a father does a son:

You were—I was; you are not—I still am,

Though had I kept our pledge of fealty,

I would now too have kept you company.

My brother,

If I think of you in bed at night,

You come to steal the slumber from my eyes;

If, eating, of the lodgings where you fast,

My food turns into venom in my craw;

If, drinking, of you thirsty in the dust,

My wine is watered by my tears. Ah, me,

You have unstrung a heart that once was gay

And melancholy made its melody,

So that the sweetness of your memory

Becomes hot gall, and if I hear a person call out

“Isaac!”

To a friend,

I feel my innards burn and flood with bile.

Ah, then it seems to me that the whole world

Stands tall around my downfall,

Jesting so at my calamity

That if I had the self-control of Joseph

Faced with all his brothers, I could not

Hold back my tears at its rude levity.

Alas for him

Whom I laid in the ground with my own hands!

In the deep earth I put him, and set him down,

and walked away

As if I never loved him as a child

More than I loved myself, or side by side

Slept in one bed with him when we were boys,

Or shared a schoolbench and its lessons with him.

Alas, he let me place him in that pit,

Exchanging a cool bedroom’s pleasant shade

For the cloddy chamber of dark death

As if he took no pleasure in the kiss

I gave him each time that he came to lodge

Beneath my roof,

And did not joy to see me on the path

To his front door, as happy in his home

As he in mine,

And was not cheered to hear that I was well

And pained when anything went ill with me,

Because he was the first to whom I turned

For help or when in trouble, and to whom

I told my secrets and confided all my woes.

O light that has gone out

And seared my soul as never when it glowed!

Was it because I left you in the grave

All by yourself on that black day that you,

Longing for your family and friends,

Took away three of my kinsmen from me,

And stationed them around you, though their deaths,

Which were as grievous to me as my own,

Brought us no closer?

Ah, lie a little longer where you are

And I will join you, plucked by the same hand

That purloined you. God rest you (for my rest

Was put to rest by Him the day you died)

And reward your righteousness as He

Has paid me back for my iniquity!

How could I think to sleep or shut my eyes

Knowing that tomorrow may arrive

To bring my body the same fate as yours?

Since the day that you were called

I fear for my own sin;

Wise men and fool alike—let all

Beware your death’s omen!

Translated by Hillel Halkin.

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Credits

Samuel ha-Nagid, “The Death of Isaac,” trans. Hillel Halkin, from Hillel Halkin, Grand Things to Write a Poem On: A Verse Autobiography of Shmuel Hanagid (Jerusalem: Gefen, 2000), 73–78 [poems XI–XIV]. Used with permission of the publisher. Image: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Department of Manuscripts, Arabe 3929, fol. 78r, detail.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.

Poems XI–XIV: Mourning His Brother

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XI

XII

XIII

XIV

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Poems XI–XIV: Mourning His Brother

About This Entry

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

Credits

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